UBC’s summer residency brings artists into the studio

Artists given space to create work, design, learn, and teach

UBC Okanagan’s new Summer Residency program is connecting artists with free studio space, allowing them time and encouragement to create new work and enhance their skills.

Inaugurated by UBC Okanagan’s Creative Studies department, the residency gives emerging and established artists access to specialized facilities for sculpture, printmaking, painting, drawing, photography, and multimedia.

The artists have the time and space to tackle projects, develop new work and conduct research. In return, the public will have an opportunity to see professional artists in action. As the summer progresses, residency participants will showcase their work to the public through exhibitions, performances, and an open-studio day.

Running until to August 20, the residency will host four artists. From Lethbridge, Alberta, Patrick Lundeen’s visceral sculptures and paintings draw from various genres like Indigenous art, Minimalism, Primitivism, folk art, and kitsch to explore present-day conditions of humour, skepticism and anxiety. A graduate of Concordia University, Lundeen’s practice is one part quasi-scientific anthropology and ethnography and one part Saturday-at-the-mall.

Vernon-based artist, curator, and art consultant Katie Brennan creates colourful, abstract works in gouache that present intriguing spatial compositions inspired by the natural world. Brennan has exhibited in Canada, the U.S., and England. She completed her master of fine arts degree at the University of Guelph and her undergraduate degree at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

Winnipeg-born Kelowna resident Margo Yacheshyn creates drawings and sculptures that explore memory while evoking feelings of both beauty and repulsion. A graduate of the Alberta College of Art and Design, Yacheshyn was actively involved with the artist trading card movement in its early years.

Netherlands-born Jeroen Witvliet works in painting, installation, video and other media. Through his work, he strives to find different ways to connect with reality, to go beyond the immediacy of first encounters and link them to history, the uncertainty of memory, notions of truth, dominance and manipulation. Witvliet holds a master of fine arts degree from the University of Victoria and a fine arts degree from the Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam.

Upcoming solo exhibitions at UBC Okanagan’s FINA Art Gallery:

• Katie Brennan: July 27 to 31, opening reception Wednesday, July 29, 7 at p.m.
• Margo Yacheshyn: August 10 to 14, closing reception Friday, August 14, at 7 p.m.

While not formally part of the residency, the Kelowna Art Gallery will also be presenting Witvliet’s exhibition “Wayfarer” July 25 to October 18 with a reception July 24, 7 to 9 p.m.

More detail about the artists and their work can be found at:

Patrick Lundeen: http://patricklundeen.tumblr.com

Jeroen Witvliet: http://jeroenwitvliet.com/home.html

Margo Yacheshyn: http://yacheshyn.blogspot.ca

Katie Brennan: http://www.katiebrennan.ca

For more information about the residency please contact Katherine Pickering at ubcosummerresidency@gmail.com, or go to www.facebook.com/UBCOsummerresidency.

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